Fricson Vinicio George Tenorio, Dalys Roxana Castro Bustamante, Mario Alfredo Fernández Solís
Local government administrative management faces increasing pressures in fiscal crisis scenarios, particularly in territories where reduced national transfers limit operational capacity and public service delivery. This study analyzes the administrative management models and local governance practices of the Municipal Decentralized Autonomous Government (GAD) of Arenillas, Ecuador, during the 2023–2024 period. Its purpose is to identify the main constraints, assess citizen perceptions of service quality, and propose institutional optimization strategies. A mixed-methods, descriptive, and cross-sectional design was used, integrating citizen surveys, semi-structured interviews with municipal officials, and documentary analysis of regulations, budgets, and institutional processes. Results show intermediate satisfaction levels regarding transparency, citizen participation, and administrative efficiency, alongside persistent bureaucratic practices, weaknesses in institutional communication, and limitations derived from fiscal reductions. Qualitative findings highlight gaps in technological modernization, limited process systematization, and weak alignment between planning and execution. These outcomes are contrasted with contemporary frameworks of New Public Management, digital government, and collaborative governance. The study concludes that strengthening organizational culture, expanding participatory mechanisms, digitalizing procedures, and improving inter-institutional coordination are key to consolidating efficient municipal management. The research provides contextualized evidence to guide local policy actions in settings characterized by fiscal constraints.
This article analyzes the implementation of participatory budgeting as a democratic governance mechanism in the Decentralized Autonomous Municipal Government of Santa Ana de Cotacachi, Ecuador, during 2015-2020. Through a mixed methodological approach combining systematic documentary analysis of 147 official documents, 42 semi-structured interviews, participant observation in 12 deliberative sessions, and statistical analysis of management indicators, the institutionalization of the Cantonal Participation System and its multidimensional impact on local public management is examined. Results show that normative formalization through the 2016 Ordinance consolidated a two-decade participatory process, achieving mobilization of 8,347 unique citizens (21.3% of adult population) and execution of 312 priority projects with investment exceeding USD 8.4 million. Econometric analysis reveals significant correlation (r=0.76, p<0.001) between national transfers and participatory resources, evidencing structural fiscal vulnerability. Three critical success factors are identified: multilevel institutional articulation, accumulated social capital (186 active organizations), and contextualized methodological adaptation. However, structural challenges persist related to fiscal dependency (68% of revenue from transfers), power asymmetries in participation (73% male overrepresentation in leadership), and tensions between economic development and environmental sustainability. Comparative analysis with 15 Latin American experiences positions Cotacachi as a paradigmatic case of institutional innovation, albeit with scalability limitations. The study concludes that the model represents a significant contribution to democratization of subnational public management, requiring structural reforms in fiscal architecture and inclusion mechanisms to ensure sustainability.
Moisés Wladimir Henríquez-Moreira, Ariana Yomira Zamora-Párraga, Darwin Javier Zamora Mayorga
Participatory budgeting is presented as a tool for democratic governance that promotes citizen participation, transparency, and the equitable distribution of public resources through dialogue and consensus. The main objective of this research is to analyze the relationship between participatory budgeting and the management of the Decentralized Municipal Autonomous Government of the Ventanas canton during the year 2024, with two specific objectives: to determine how it strengthens local governance and to identify its impact on the canton's socioeconomic development. The methodology used was descriptive-explanatory with a qualitative approach, allowing for the characterization of the phases and actors involved in the process, as well as the examination of factors that influence its implementation. Documentary analysis of regulatory and bibliographic sources was used, along with interviews with officials from the GAD's Finance, Administration, and Planning departments, as well as with citizens, to learn about their perceptions and experiences. The participatory budget was developed in five phases: organization and dissemination, training, working groups, preparation and approval, and monitoring. Financial indicators revealed high efficiency in revenue (98%) and expenditure (97%), as well as a reduction in financial dependence. However, problems of socioeconomic disconnect and political prioritization were identified that limit the social impact of participatory budgeting, underscoring the need to strengthen planning and citizen participation.
José Alexander Manjarres Márquez, Ramiro Enrique Salazar Ramos, E. Pérez
This article reviews the Colombian regulatory system, which has developed various forms of transferring resources from the national level to the local level for financing social expenditures, primarily in education, which is the sector with the highest allocation. Subsequently, the current system is described, which grants the most representative transfers from the nation to territorial entities to address sector-specific social expenditure. To analyze the resources allocated to the education sector in the Sucre department during the period 2010-2020 in practice and to determine if the transfer system effectively aims at fiscal decentralization, coupled with strengthening local and departmental capacities to autonomously manage transferred resources and efficiently manage tax collection and the acquisition of own resources. The work was developed using a mixed-method methodology, allowing for the approach of quantitative data to support qualitative analyses of the research using primary and secondary sources, as well as the observation of socioeconomic phenomena, establishing concurrent triangulation design.
This research uses Urban Regime Theory and identifies one in Pudahuel, Chile. It examines the process through which the public-private agreements and a strategic agenda were organized to develop urban and social policies in Pudahuel commune through local actors between 1994 and 2010. Given the lack of decentralized planning in Chile and taking advantage of a change in the balance of power in Pudahuel, local actors imagined and produced environmental and social policies based on their local reality. And concluded the process with a local masterplan, mainly financed by the private sector. The process develops a model of urbanization through compensation. However, this does not guarantee full citizen participation, effective alternatives to segregation nor balanced development. The analysis also serves as an indicator of how effective the central government is in directing the urban economy. The Pudahuel regime was eventually used as a model for national urban programs; both reductionist models of the initial meaning of producing urban policies through compensation that consider local environmental conflicts.
Basic education in Argentina is organized under a federal and decentralized scheme. The concern for equity and redistributive justice in educational financing under this scheme presents particularities and complexities that need to be understood in order to address the inequality around educational investment. The decentralization of educational institutions to subnational jurisdictions generated two institutionalized effects. The structural inequality of educational investment per student under state management at the subnational level and, at the same time, it has been almost three decades that the national state has not directly managed the Educative offer. From the perspective of the theory of fiscal federalism, intergovernmental fiscal tools are designed that allow an impact on inequities and inequalities between both levels of government. The educational investment gap with subnational financing increased from 5 to 8 times between the lowest and highest investment. The national State, established with funds of national origin to reduce it to between 3 and 5 times, remaining constant throughout the period. The incidence of transfers of national origin made it possible to reduce the gap of structural inequality in educational investment between subnational jurisdictions, although the challenge consists in planning financing in the search for equity and distributive justice under this federal and decentralized scheme.
The topicality of the topic is connected with the growing role of culture in the state administration of Russia. According to the forecast of the long-term socio-economic development of the Russian Federation until 2030, culture is a priority area of state support to ensure the maximum possible access of citizens to cultural values and education in the sphere culture, as well as the preservation of works of culture and art. Museums, as objects of storage and demonstration of cultural values, are an integral part of cultural policy. The state policy in the museum area consists of financial support, provision of professional staff, improvement of the legal and regulatory framework, coordination of the activities of federal and regional authorities in relation to museums. Museums are a complex and specific area of public policy and governance, as each institution has different values in importance, different possibilities of self-financing. Therefore, it is impossible to apply the same criteria to all state museums that determine its effectiveness. The article examines the main models of state cultural and museum policy in the field of protection, disposal and use of cultural monuments, reveals the specifics of the legislative framework and organizational and economic support. The conclusions are drawn that the combination of centralized and decentralized management of the museum sphere, the elimination of the contradictions of the legal and legal framework in the museum and cultural sphere, the creation of a mutually beneficial mechanism of public-private partnerships will provide the most effective model of cultural and museum policy for the protection of cultural monuments.
The article presents partial results of a comparative research that aims to discuss federalism as a form of organization of the State and its repercussions for the organization and financing of basic education in Argentina and Brazil. Documentary analysis methodology was used and special attention was given to the legal documents that organize and regulate the federative relations in education and in the financing of education in both countries. As the main findings are the fact that the supply and financing of basic education are decentralized, under the marked responsibility of the subnational ones, although there are mechanisms of action of the national one in the financing of education, either by repairing resources or acting in a complementary way.
This paper presents an analysis of the decentralization process that has been taking place in Bolivia over the last couple of decades. It starts with a review of the legal framework that determines the distribution of responsibilities and financial resources to the sub-national governments (9 departments and 339 municipalities), and continues with an analysis of the evolution and distribution of financing to these entities between 2001 and 2013. It then proceeds to describe the resulting progress in social indicators between 2001 and 2012 at the municipal level, and identifies the main remaining gaps in basic services by 2012. Finally, the paper offers an analysis of the factors that are most closely associated with progress in the main social indicator used by the Bolivian government - the Unsatisfied Basic Needs index. This provides the basis for a final section on recommendations for public investment in Bolivia.
The present work tries to evaluate the present Law of Municipal Co-participation of the Province of Buenos Aires from the point of view of the capacity of financing of the cost of the municipal health sector in the Province of Buenos Aires. The "health component" explains the 37% of the distribution of the co-participable mass. The implicit "prices" of the selected variables, influence the "what" and "how" to produce goods in health. This is why the controversies between the fiscal objectives shaped in the normative variant of the method and the assigning eficiency of the sector, as well as the fairness in health, central objectives of the sanitary policy, are put in evidence. As a conclusion and after analysing the results of the distribution, I attempt to demonstrate that in a system of distribution of funds, where variables that try to partially measure the activity of a government function are included, where the criterion to repay the cost of the decentralized public services reigns, in the specific case of health it transforms into a signal that confirms and deepens the assigning inefficiency and the inequality in the distribution.
This dissertation examines whether decentralization to municipal governments in Mexico has improved democratic governance. The research examines the effects of decentralization on democratic governance in three Mexican cities: Tijuana, Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, and Chilpancingo and draws on key national indicators. The findings indicate that decentralization has significantly increased the authority and autonomy of Mexican municipalities, but that these changes have not necessarily led to local governments that are responsive and accountable to citizens or allow for citizens' active engagement in public affairs. Further analysis of these findings suggests that municipal political institutions create few incentives for public authorities to be responsive and accountable to citizens. The use of closed party lists, prohibitions on independent candidacies, guaranteed supermajorities for the leading party, and the prohibition on reelection all combine to undermine accountability and responsiveness. In this environment, public authorities tend to be more concerned about party leaders than citizens. As a result, citizens continue to be linked to local governments through political brokers within the principal political parties and there are few real opportunities for citizen engagement outside of these mediated channels despite the nominal existence of elaborate participatory planning processes. Nonetheless, the study also finds marked differences in the way that citizens are linked to the political system in different cities. Where strong social organizations existed prior to decentralization, citizens are more likely to have effective, albeit indirect, channels for voice in public affairs. Where these social organizations are linked closely to the principal political parties, they are even more likely to influence public policy than where these organizations are highly autonomous. Strong social organizations provide a necessary basis for ensuring citizen voice, but their linkages to the political process ultimately determine whether they are effective in influencing policy decisions. In other words, horizontal linkages in civil society--social capital--are a necessary precondition for good democratic governance, but vertical linkages between citizens and political actors are equally important.
"A silent, and in my opinion revolutionary, reform of the budget, to truly become a management tool and an instrument for short-term economic and social programming." This is how the participatory budget was cataloged by a senior official from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. "They are a disaster, with this spending has been atomized... In addition, the MEF has acted against the law", affirms emphatically and harshly -and as a balance, a year later- the main person in charge of the National Decentralization Council (CND).
T he National Education Program states that creating distance between private and public education is not its intention, nevertheless, the scheme it has adopted, inherited from previous governments, discriminates private higher education and has monopolized education surveillance through the Secretariat of Public Education. Such task must be in the hands of the civil society and in its capacity to accredit self-financed higher education institutions, with the same autonomy and scope as those of public universities, the relationship between the civil society and the government will remain unchanged in the Program. It will still perceive the public university as a decentralized entity created, financed and ruled by a Hegelian State and, at the same time, it will still see the private university as if it had a governmental concession to render a public service to be academically controlled by the State. This posture inhibits the undertaking of actions by universities because the Program has chosen not to analyze the prevailing behavior.
Many people think changes are always good. However, sometimes it is not so. Before making a change, one must ask what kind of change is it and how it will affect status quo. This paper tries to show how an institutional change that has been wrongly conceived could lead to a worse situation. The Venezuelan experience studied here is a ?show-window? of contradictory decentralization process, in which sub-national governments lack the faculties to generate their own income, and moreover, in which oil income continues to be almost the only source of governmental financing.